Claiming space: Contested coastal commons in Mumbai

Summary

Many of the world’s cities are located on the coast, and coastal ecologies and livelihoods are under increasing pressure from rapid urban transformations and climate change. This necessitates paying attention to how coastal spaces are understood and governed, but the spatial dimensions of urban coastal commons has received comparatively little attention. How are coastal spaces framed, understood, and contested? Drawing on scholarship on socio-spatial relations, the ‘right to the city’, and spatial justice, we explore these questions through tracing the contestations around the coastal commons in Mumbai, particularly focusing on the Coastal Road project and how claims of rights and access by the Koli fishing community unfolded. The case untangles the multi-scalar framings of coastal commons as places that are intimately tied up with Koli identity, versus city planners’ view of coasts as mere ‘conduits’, with the transformation of fluid land-sea commons into legible and controllable territory. We make an argument for the notion of a ‘right to the coast as commons’ as being conducive for a more climate-resilient city that heeds the particular ecological interdependencies and stewardship of coastal communities.